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> The Mongols didn’t use local talent for palace guards and so on

Did the Fatimids? I thought filling military positions with captured foreign slaves was really common under Arabic rule.




Muslim rule generally. The Ottomans had the Janissaries. The Qajars in Persia had the Ghulam. The only one of the Muslim gunpowder empires not to use slave soldiers were the Mughals who were ethnically distinct anyway. Persians and some Arabs and Turks ruling over South Asians.


The previous empires that the Mughals conquered used slave soldiers (Iltutmish, Khilji, Aibak, Lodis)


Good question. I assume there was a distinction between the various foreign soldiers and the ruler’s bodyguard under the Fatimids, but I can’t say for certain.




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